Teach For America-Los Angeles

Our Trauma-Informed Teaching Initiative promotes the mental wellness of our teachers and students, enhances instructional effectiveness, and motivates teachers to stay in education.

Given the issues facing our immigrant students in Los Angeles and with the announcement of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) in 2012, we are committed to increasing pathways for DACA recipients to join as Teach For America corps members teaching in Los Angeles public schools. We believe DACAmented corps members have the unique potential to serve as role models for students who share the same background.

We will recruit, train, and develop an expanding cohort of exceptional preschool teachers for under-served communities in Los Angeles.

Our vision of Los Angeles in 2050 is a city where every child, regardless of what zip code they live in or the where they were born, has the opportunity to obtain an excellent education. At Teach For America (TFA) we believe the key to an exemplary education system in Los Angeles is leadership and we are working to build a team of leaders committed to creating change.

There are three parts to our mission:

1) We recruit diverse recent college graduates and professionals with demonstrated leadership ability to teach for a minimum of two years in low-income public schools.

2) We provide intensive training and support for these teachers, called corps members, so they can have an immediate positive effect on student achievement and deepen their own understanding of what it takes to end educational inequity.

3) We foster their leadership as alumni who, deeply affected by their experience in the classroom, work at every level of education and across other sectors to advocate for the interests of students.

Teach For America has been working alongside communities in Los Angeles since the organization’s founding in 1990. Since then our corps members have taught 440,000 Los Angeles students. This year approximately 300 corps members are teaching more than 20,000 students every day in and around Los Angeles.

As a result of our 23 years in this city, our alumni network includes more than 1,600 individuals, including 50 principals and school leaders, 13 school system leaders (who supervise clusters of school leaders), and 11 elected officials. In concert with our communities, our alumni have worked to establish whole schools of excellence, which serve as proof points throughout our city of what is possible for our children. Our more mature alumni now have the experience and credibility to lead schools and school system and drive policy for the public and private sectors. The two decades invested in developing our people as leaders are now paying off. We believe the benefit of this investment will ripple throughout our city over the next 20 years when today’s corps members are teaching in classrooms, leading schools and businesses, serving on city councils, crafting legislation, and advocating for our students.